Ms Diane Abbott
MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington · Independent · United Kingdom
“Opposition Members seem to need reminding that the early release programme was devised by a Conservative Government. We have been debating at great length, in the media and among politicians, keeping people in prison for longer.”
“I have been in the House for some of them, and each one was accompanied by the same grand assertions that the Home Secretary has made this afternoon: that they would bring fairness to our immigration system and fairness to our asylum system. They did not. They simply took away rights and treated people badly.”
“People born here were deported. Families were split up. People lost their jobs. Others were denied re-entry to the country after holidays or travelling to family events, including funerals. That scandal is not over, and it is not something that we can move on from.”
“I listened with great care to the Home Secretary’s speech, and one of the things she said—she said it more than once, in different phraseology—was that her legislation is designed to remove the burden of asylum seekers from the shoulders of British people.”
“I would argue that that legislation has failed to do what Ministers said it would do; in fact, it has made people’s lives harsher and more difficult.”
“The Home Secretary will be aware of how important it is to make sure that Members of this House get the protection and defence that they need. At one point, I got as much abuse and as many threats of violence as all the other women MPs put together, so it is important that we take this issue seriously.”
The complete record
Every one of 602 lines we hold for Ms Diane Abbott, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 12 of 13.
“It is all very well for the Home Secretary to say that the police are having the biggest increase in grant since 2010, but this Government and their predecessors since 2010 have imposed austerity policies on the police, as they have done in every other area of our public services. The result is there for all to see: since 2010, 21,000 policemen and women have been axed by Tory-led Governments of one kind or another. That has undermined the entire capacity of the police services in this country to tackle crime of all types, including violent crime. Community policing has been decimated.”
“I agree with the Home Secretary that the internet giants have a role to play here in the type of material they allow, but, as he will know, that is true in respect of all sorts of crimes, from online fraud to child pornography and terrorism. All of that is too easy online, and the Government must do more than have a cosy chat with the companies that allow it. So I was glad to hear him say that he is actually prepared to act. It is long overdue for the Government to use their powers against companies that fail to act on these issues. However, the underlying problem with violent crime is that there is also a crisis in policing.”
“The idea that the answer to knife crime is a simplistic multiplication of the sentence mistakes the drivers behind knife crime, which I will come to later in my remarks. The new orders stopping young people from accessing the internet appear reasonable at first sight, but have Ministers never heard of young people creating multiple online identities? Labour Members have grave concerns about how these orders will be used, with the possibility that they will target poor communities, and black and minority ethnic boys and girls. We have yet to be given the reassurances that care will be taken to ensure that particular communities and groups of young people will not be unfairly targeted.”
“A sticking plaster solution that injects extra money in the short-term, but one which sees the burden falling unfairly on local council tax payers.” Senior police officers think that this settlement is inadequate. The president of the Police Superintendents Association, Gavin Thomas, has said: “Whilst I welcome this injection of funding, it is still far short of what the service requires to effectively meet the challenges of 21st century policing.””
“There can be no question but that the biggest indictment of this Government’s record on law and order is their long-standing failure to fund the police properly. Sadly, that is as true of this year’s funding allocation as it is of any other year’s. I have to say to the Home Secretary, in the kindest possible manner, that he is brazen in expecting Opposition Members to follow him into the Lobby on this funding settlement. We would be less than responsible if we voted for one that is patently inadequate. It is not just Members on the Opposition Benches who are saying that but ordinary police officers. The chair of the Police Federation, John Apter, said: “This appears to be a quick fix.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important point on behalf of her constituents in Derbyshire. The West Midlands police and crime commissioner says publicly what many PCCs say privately—that this Government funding does not come anywhere near to covering what the force requires just to stand still.”
“I would never accuse the Home Secretary of being so petty. This is what the West Midlands police and crime commissioner said: “This government funding does not come anywhere near to covering what the force requires…£25.6m is needed to cover extra pension costs, government-set pay increases and rising fuel costs this year.””
“My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Having spoken about what policing professionals think about this settlement, I have to stress that it does not take policing professionals to make the public aware of the consequences of the failure to provide resources and therefore police capacity. All over the country, the public are aware of issues such as the delays in responding to 999 calls. The inspectorate of constabulary, in its annual review, found instances of the police taking days to respond to calls that should have been acted on within an hour. At a recent meeting in Wolverhampton to discuss public safety, I found many people saying that they had reported instances of open drug dealing, for instance, but that no police officers had turned up—nothing was done. This all points to a lack of capacity.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important point. Later in my remarks, I will come to how the Home Office manages resources in general. Ministers seem to remain in denial about the consequences of their actions. At least the Home Secretary was able to admit on the BBC that the Government have cut 21,000 police officers, but, as my hon. Friends have elicited in questioning, Ministers continue to insist, almost alone in the country, that lower police numbers have had no negative effect in the fight against crime. That is an absurd idea.”
“We know that the effectiveness of the police has been compromised, as arrests have halved in a decade and the sanction detection rate of charges and cautions has plummeted. Tory cuts have consequences.”
“I certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating the Government of Wales, particularly on their emphasis on community policing. The real record of the UK Government is this: police officer numbers have not been this low in decades, chief constables up and down the country are warning about the consequences of the cuts in their areas and in their forces, and police-recorded violent crime is now at its highest level on record. Earlier, the Home Secretary tried to ascribe that increase to better recording of crime, but he is not supported on that by the Office for National Statistics, which says: “Over the last year we’ve seen rises in vehicle offences, robbery, and some lower-volume but higher-harm types of violence.” Recorded knife crime offences are at their highest level since records began.”
“I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that the Labour party is under new management now. This may be, as Ministers say, the largest funding increase since 2010, but it is still inadequate, as ordinary police officers, senior police officers and PCCs say.”
“City of London police has said: “Annualised funding allocations result in short term strategies that deliver short term impact”, and that they are a constraint. The PCC for Northamptonshire, Stephen Mold, said that that the “imposition of one year funding settlements…hampers effective long term financial planning”. And the PCC for Dorset, Martyn Underhill, said that the “absence of any indication of funding beyond 12 months” compromises the ability to formulate “a realistic medium term financial plan”.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend. Of course, on Merseyside we have also seen an alarming rise in knife crime. Part of the problem is the new demands on policing to which the Home Secretary referred. However, an increasing problem is that, with the collapse of public sector funding elsewhere, the police have become the public service of last resort, particularly in relation to issues such as mental health. We will be debating this later this afternoon, but central Government have taken 60%—£16 billion—out of local government funding since 2010. Cuts to youth services, housing and schools must have a bearing on levels of crime, particularly youth crime. Let me touch on something that is often not discussed—the problem with having annual funding reviews. Ministers will be aware of the long-standing concern about annual funding.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend on the question of unfairness, particularly in relation to the precept, but I will come to that issue in a few minutes. The Home Secretary needs to face up to the fact that there is an issue regarding the poor overall financial management of the police by the Home Office. Let me remind him what the National Audit Office had to say last year about the Home Office’s overall management of police finances: “We concluded that there were significant gaps in the Department’s understanding of demand and of pressures on the service, and it needed to be better informed to discharge its duties of overseeing the police and distributing funding.””
“I would have thought that Home Office Ministers might have learnt from the admonition of the chair of UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, who recommended that “the Home Office’s Head of Profession for Statistics speak to communications colleagues about the importance of clear public statements about police funding and ensure they understand the structure of police funding.””
“My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of knife crime prevention orders. One problem is that the issue is not the state of the law, but policing capacity. The National Audit Office also said: “The Home Office’s light touch approach to overseeing police forces means it does not know if the police system is financially sustainable. It lacks a long-term plan for policing and significant gaps remain in its understanding of demand for police services and their costs.” And this brazen Home Secretary expects us to join him in the Lobby tonight. Let me move on to the precept, because I cannot leave any discussion about the funding of the police without mentioning how Ministers insist on talking as if allowing PCCs to raise more money through the precept is somehow new central Government funding.”
“I am trying to make some progress. Maybe the chair of the UK Statistics Authority should have spoken to Ministers. Ministers want to claim that allowing an increase in the precept to fund the police somehow counts as a loosening of the purse strings. It really is not. The precept is not some magic money tree.”
“I agree. The precept is a tax, and Ministers know perfectly well that urban forces tend to be able to raise less per head from council tax than those in more rural areas. Urban forces such as the Metropolitan police and the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire forces rely more on central Government grants for their funding than rural forces.”
“The precept is a regressive tax that bears down disproportionately— [ Interruption. ] Had the hon. Lady waited, I might have given way. The precept is a regressive tax that bears down disproportionately on poorer people and poorer regions. It is unfair on the population within a given region and it is unfair between regions. As the Police Federation said: “They are passing the buck of funding the police service to the public by doubling the council tax precept that police and crime commissioners are allowed to charge.” This is no way to fund a cohesive police force. We see a rise in violent crime, cuts to police numbers and increasing concern about public safety. This Government have let down ordinary police officers and the public. Their overall management of police funding is demonstrably poor.”
“If so, what is that evidence? Will the new orders be subject to appeal or review? In addition, what measures are in place to ensure that those deprived of internet access do not simply open up another account using different personal details? The head of the violent crime taskforce said “we cannot enforce our way out of this—prevention and intervention is the key”. We do not reject out of hand these knife crime orders. The House will study them when they come to Committee, but we want to see more from Government than token changes in the law. We want to see real intent and real resources behind prevention and intervention, because the lives of young people in our cities depend on that.”
“People said to me over and over again that they report those they believe to be drug dealers and what they believe to be young people carrying knives, and they get no response because of a lack of police capacity. Does the Minister accept that although the announcement of knife crime prevention orders was preceded by the Home Secretary’s declaration in October last year that the Government are adopting a public health approach to violent crime, it is simply not clear how knife crime prevention orders fit into that? How is this a public health approach that is supposed to address the underlying causes as well as tackling criminals? We are told that suspects as young as 12 will be on curfew and deprived of their liberty and access to social media. These are only suspects. Are any of these measures based on evidence?”
“Does the Minister accept that with knife crime at record levels, the public at home will be very disappointed that the Home Secretary could not find the time to be in the Chamber today for this urgent question? Opposition Members appreciate that knife crime prevention orders are an attempt to intervene without criminalising, but does the Minister accept that the problems of knife crime and other types of violent crime are as much about capacity as the law? When we say “capacity”, it is a question of not only the number of police officers, which has dropped under this Government, but the capacity in the youth service. I was in Wolverhampton last week, where the youth service has been decimated.”
“The truth is that the Bill, the immigration White Paper and the accompanying media narrative play to some of the very worst aspects of the Brexit debate. In the process, the Bill risks doing irreparable damage to business, the economy and society.”
“This is an important debate, not least because issues around migration lay at the heart of much of the debate on Brexit. I would make the following point to Ministers. To the extent that they continue to confuse migration in general with the specific issue of freedom of movement, they are not helping the clarity of the debate. During the recent debate on the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, the Home Secretary said that he was “determined to continue to have an immigration system that welcomes the very best talent from across the world, helping us to build an open, welcoming and outward looking post-Brexit Britain.” —[ Official Report , 11 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 700.] If only that were the case.”
“It would allow derivative traders, private equity investors and merchant bankers in, but it would exclude nurses, social care workers, scientific researchers and many more. Salary is not a proxy for the level of skill, and a salary-based immigration system will not work for incentivising high-skilled migration. For example, many science research roles have starting salaries of around £22,000, and the 1% pay cap imposed on the public sector has held down wages in public sector science in particular. A salary threshold is wrong in principle and setting it at £30,000 would have an extremely damaging impact on science and public services. The Home Secretary has pointed out that a salary threshold currently applies to non-EEA migrants, but we would argue that we should not be levelling down at this stage, but assuring fairness all round.”
“I can only thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention. She will have to wait for me to complete my remarks. Let me quote: “The new immigration system must command public confidence and support the economy. These proposals would achieve neither. The proposals don’t meet the UK’s needs and would be a sucker punch for many firms right across the country”. Who said that? It was not a Labour MP but the Confederation of British Industry. One example of how the Government, far from seeking the best talent, will potentially make it harder for industry and the public sector to recruit the best talent is the suggested salary threshold that the Home Secretary has put out to consultation. He has spoken about “focussing on high skilled migration not low-skilled migration”. But he is actually proposing an income-based system.”
“We set that out in our 2017 manifesto. I am a slavish devotee of that magnificent document, so on that basis the Front Bench of the Labour party will not be opposing the Bill this evening.”
“If this were a Labour Government attempting to grant themselves these powers, we would be denounced for making a constitutional power grab and mounting a coup, to coin a phrase. We will be opposing the assumption of these sweeping powers without tying them to specific policies. We will not be offering a blank cheque, which the Government can redeem at any time they are in trouble and are tempted to whip up anti-migrant sentiment as a distraction. We on the Labour Benches also say that the Government need to accept the recommendations of the Law Commission. We need to simply and clarify our existing immigration system first before changing anything in relation to EU citizens here. Moving on to the question of freedom of movement, the Labour party is clear that when Britain leaves the single market, freedom of movement ends.”
“It should not become enshrined in a widely cast law. Let me turn now to the flimsy nature of this proposed legislation. This may be one of the flimsiest pieces of proposed legislation on a major issue that I, and many others, have ever seen. Worse than that, it is supplemented by a whole slew of Henry VIII powers that the Government and the Secretary of State intend to grant to themselves. It is easy to demonstrate just how undemocratic those powers are. The Government claim they are a tidying up exercise and no new powers will be granted or exercised. However, our current immigration system is so untidy that it has the capacity to ruin lives—indeed, it frequently does ruin lives.”
“It will potentially lead to huge churn in the workforce, and create a category of second-class workers with no rights who are open to unscrupulous exploitation in the growth of the informal economy. We oppose the creation of a two-tier workforce. That would have the effect, which some incorrectly claim freedom of movement does, of lowering wages and rights for all. Workers should have rights as workers and not be prey to some of the most unscrupulous employers. There is a genuine need for temporary workers in a certain number of sectors, such as agriculture and some aspects of the hospitality industry. We appreciate that the Government are piloting a new seasonal agricultural workers scheme, but there is no requirement for this type of insecure temporary work to become the norm across the economy.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for quoting from my article in the Morning Star . I am not sure if that is the first time he has read that paper, but I will expand further on that issue in my remarks. I now turn to the very serious issue of the proposal for new 12-month visas. Nowhere is this flouting of the right to family life more blatant than in the case of the proposed new category of temporary workers. They will only be allowed to come here for 12 months at a time, without the right to bring their families, and perhaps then be deported. Do the Government not realise that their 12-month visas will be attractive only to the most desperate workers?”
“The Home Secretary risks being accused of complacency on the subject of EU citizens. There is still a great deal of concern among EU citizens about what the reality of the registration system will be and about whether the Government are equipped to register millions of EU citizens effectively, and there is uncertainty among not just EU citizens themselves but their employers.”
“I remind Members that I have spent almost all my political career trying to help individuals deal with the excesses of an unfair immigration system. They would not be amused by seeing and hearing Members turn that into some kind of parliamentary game. The Labour party reserves the right to reconsider its position on this proposed legislation when it comes out of Committee. There is no question but that freedom of movement can work. My parents came in the 1950s when there was effectively freedom of movement between the United Kingdom and the colonies. More recently, freedom of movement has worked well for key industries in the UK such as science, telecoms, heritage, aviation and the public services—in particular, the NHS. For many young people in particular, the removal of freedom of movement will be an absolute loss.”
“Now we have a monstrous system where people are held in administrative detention for a year or more. Ministers insist that detention is not indefinite, but if someone is in a detention centre, cut off from their friends and family, with no idea when they will be released, it certainly feels like indefinite detention to them. It has long been my view that we should end indefinite detention, and the Labour party’s commitment to ending it was set out clearly in the 2017 manifesto. I welcome the fact that Members on both sides of the House are coming round to that point of view. One can only hope that the Bill is amended along those lines in Committee.”
“I am loth to disagree with the Father of the House, but he will be aware—more than any other Member, because he has been here longer—that this is not the end of our deliberations on the Bill. As has happened many times before, we will see how it is amended in Committee before we take a decision on how we vote on Third Reading, which will be the end of the deliberations. One thing we hope will be addressed when the Bill goes into Committee is indefinite administrative detention. I was a Member of Parliament when immigration detention as we now know it was introduced. When some of us queried the lack of due process surrounding it, we were told not to concern ourselves because people would be detained for only short periods immediately prior to being deported.”
“Before I bring my remarks to a close, I have a few questions to ask Ministers. First, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, when will the Government actually implement the Bill and repeal free movement? Does the Secretary of State accept that there is some lack of clarity about the position of Irish citizens? [ Interruption. ] Conservative Members are laughing about the position of Irish citizens, but Irish citizens have come to Opposition Members to express their concerns about the current lack of clarity.”
“Will the automatic deportation regime imposed by the UK Borders Act 2007 also now apply to Irish citizens? Do the Government accept that ending free movement for EU citizens would also end free movement for other groups of UK workers, including UK scientists, and limit their ability to work on pan-European research projects? Do they accept that, unless each EU country legislates otherwise, British citizens travelling to EU countries will be immediately treated as third country nationals, so they will lose their free movement rights?”
“As a consequence of the hostile environment, sick people were denied cancer treatment, which horrified the public when they read about it for the first time, and people were evicted from their homes because they could not get the benefits they were entitled to. People were detained—I met women detained under the hostile environment on my visit to Yarl’s Wood last year—and deported, and people who had gone home to the Caribbean for a holiday—”
“I saw them driving through my constituency in east London, and I have to tell the Home Secretary—in case he is not aware—that they represent a low point in our migration policy, having been designed to intimidate and strike fear into the hearts of people who were here perfectly legally. Or was the concern whipped up by the introduction of the hostile environment? I would be the first to say that some of its elements were introduced under a Labour Government, but the majority were brought in post 2010, when the current Prime Minister was Home Secretary, and I voted against the legislation.”
“In conclusion, the Home Secretary said in the debate on the withdrawal deal: “Concern over uncontrolled immigration from the EU was a major factor in the decision to leave the EU.” —[ Official Report , 11 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 698.] Who whipped up that concern? Could it have been the political party that introduced completely bogus immigration targets—targets that have never been met, were never intended to be met and were just a vehicle for anti-immigrant sentiment and targets that the current Home Secretary seems unwilling to stand by? Could it have been whipped up by the “Go home” vans?”
“The Home Secretary knows perfectly well that I never voted for those aspects of Labour policy, and I made the point that some of the aspects of the hostile environment, particularly in relation to the health service, were introduced under a Labour Government.”
“Rather than trying to score the political points, the public would want the Home Secretary to move much faster in sorting out the Windrush scandal and to look further into its effects, because persons from the Caribbean were not the only Commonwealth cohort affected. Unless the Home Secretary moves faster and with more will, other cohorts of persons from all parts of the former British empire will be treated in the way in which the Windrush persons were treated.”
“Above all, the consequence of the Windrush scandal was that a whole generation of people who came here after the war to what they thought of as the mother country, to rebuild that mother country, were humiliated and degraded. I think that that generation and their relatives and friends would appreciate a more serious contemplation of this issue in the House tonight.”
“Finally, let me say this. Migration has been a question for heated debate in this country over the decades. The Bill represented an opportunity for us to start to build a fairer immigration system across the board.”
“We will wait to see how the Bill emerges from Committee, but I say to Ministers who are sitting there smirking that literally millions of people in this country have been detrimentally affected by poor immigration legislation—not just under this Government, but under previous Governments—and want to see reform. We will not be supporting the Bill tonight, but we will be watching to see what emerges from the Committee stage.”
“I have listened with great care to the Home Secretary. He will be aware that the EU insists on treaty arrangements governing key aspects of international security, justice and policing. Without a treaty, courts have no legal basis to implement arrest or extradition warrants, and cannot allow access to criminal and other databases to third countries. The danger is that there will be a mutual loss of the European arrest warrant and the UK will no longer be able to access the Europol database in real time. How does he justify putting the security of the nation at risk in this way?”
“We regret that there has been such a huge break in this debate, but it has now resumed and Labour Members are saying that we will not be voting for the deal. It is wholly dishonest to say that the choice is between this deal or nothing—wholly dishonest. We will not vote for this deal. We believe that the country deserves better, and that the deal does not engage with the serious issues of security and migration that it needs to address. We will go through the Lobby to vote down this deal, and I only hope that those on the Treasury Bench have a plan B.”
“On EU migrants, I repeat that from what we know about the immigration and nationality directorate from advice surgeries and individual case loads, there must be doubt about its capacity to process more than 3 million people speedily and efficiently. I remind the House of the concerns about security and the safety of the realm among stakeholders such as the former heads of MI6 and defence chiefs, and those in Brussels. I do not know whether Conservative Members have had occasion to go to Brussels and talk to stakeholders and commissioners, but if they have done so they will be aware of the very real concerns. Whether on migration, EU migrants, or safety and security, Labour does not believe that this deal meets the tests we have set out.”
“Indeed, people who have seen the scenes outside the House of Commons this week and in the past would do well to be concerned about the possibility of that debate going backwards. We have seen unpleasant scenes and attacks on Members of Parliament going about their business, on journalists, and even a black policeman was abused by those Brexit campaigners. We must be mindful to have a debate that moves forward and does not look back or excite passions, and that at all times acknowledges the important role that migration has played—and hopefully will continue to play—in building this country. In its efforts to pander to certain elements of the British electorate, the House at least must maintain a respectful and serious debate about migration.”